The trump card is the inspired casting of Walter Matthau as the ageing small-time bank-robber hero Charley Varrick

12:01AM BST 22 Oct 2008

DVD of the week: Charley Varrick

15, Fremantle

I'm not the only one to have noted the close plot-resemblance of No Country for Old Men to Don Siegel's Charley Varrick (1973), a cult favourite among admirers of this maverick director.

(The early 70s were a great time for small tough thrillers with a poignant undertow, now mostly forgotten – like The Outfit, Operation Undercover, The Gravy Train, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Taking of Pelham 123…)

Now – at a credit-crunch price – comes our chance to see how Siegel's unpretentious, hard-edged, cool little film looks beside its pumped-up descendant. Pretty well, is the answer.

The trump card is the inspired casting of Walter Matthau as the ageing small-time bank-robber hero Charley Varrick, departing brilliantly from his usual comic territory and showing with impressive clamped-down dryness how magnificently he could command a serious part.

The film starts with a botched heist (a terrific scene): Varrick robs a small-town New Mexico bank that turns out to be a "drop" for dirty Mafia money, so discovering three-quarters-of-a-million dollars only depresses him. "Something smells bad," he sourly remarks to his unlikeably cock-a-hoop accomplice Harlan (Andy Robinson, Dirty Harry's psychopath).

He knows that not only the police but also the Mafia will be after them – and indeed they're hunted down by a hulking, psychopathic cowboy, incongruously called Molly (Joe Don Baker).

Varrick's day-job is as a crop-duster – his overalls proclaim him "The Last of the Independents". And when he's put to the test, he proves himself a survivor – unlike the Coens' poor, outclassed Josh Brolin.

Philip Horne

Iron Man

12, Paramount

One wouldn't be blamed for thinking a blockbuster version of a 1960s comic strip would lack depth. But Jon Favreau has succeeded in adapting Stan Lee's Iron Man into a highly-entertaining, modern marvel.

The accomplished Robert Downey Junior proves his versatility by playing multibillionaire arms manufacturer and playboy Tony Stark.

After being taken hostage in Afghanistan, Stark is ordered to recreate the WMD he had been busy showing off. Instead he engineers a rocket-powered suit and goes about removing arms that have fallen into the wrong hands in order to preserve world peace.

But Downey Junior is invariably the star of the show - he is suave, funny and turns our idea of the typical goody on its head. Along with some magnificent special effects, this film is set to become every film buff's guilty pleasure.

Alice Klein

Eraserhead; The Short Films of David Lynch

18; 15, Scanbox Entertainment

"I wouldn't want to have a dream like that" was the comment of David Lynch's mother after watching her boy's first feature, the extraordinary Eraserhead (1977) – the culmination of a training as a painter and film-maker, and the result of amazing patience on the part of the American Film Institute.

The AFI let Lynch stay on for years in their LA stable-block to make this wonderful, excruciating nightmare of a film, creating amazing sets and a whole weird, grungy, post-industrial world for his sad-sack besuited hero Henry (Jack Nance) to inhabit. It's in beautiful black-and-white – in colour, these images would probably disgust us.

As Henry's bizarre, unforgettable coiffure implies, this is a distinctly hair-raising excursion into chaos. The film itself is the blackest Beckettian comedy: a parody-version of family life, in which our poor young man is forced to marry and take responsibility for a hideous, but pitiably expressive, bleating mutant offspring.

Longer than the film itself is the 90-odd-minute reminiscence by Lynch about its making – which like his introductions to the wacky, disturbing Short Films, is a droll delight.

Festen 10th Anniversary Edition

15, Metrodome

Every family has a secret waiting to be told, but the Klingenfeld clan has a festering malignancy that's ready to burst into the open.

During a family party celebrating the 60th birthday of Helge, the pater of this wealthy Danish familias, Helge's son, Christian, calmly tells the assembled guests what happened to him and his sister as children when Helge had his nightly bath.

It's a revelation whose repercussions are, to begin with, less convulsive than expected. But as the guests retreat into the comfort of drink, family rituals, songs and old jokes, the full impact of Helge's actions becomes horribly plain.

Festen ("The Celebration") was the first film to be made under the austere rules of the Dogme '95 manifesto – hand-held cameras, no music unless it is part of the scene being filmed, a minimum of artificial light – but for director Thomas Vinterberg these restrictions are a liberation as he employs dazzling free-flowing camerawork that feeds the feverish intensity of the drama.

The cast, likewise relishing the brave new world of Dogme, are brilliant. Festing is a stunning, unmissable film, now available with valuable new extras – cast and crew look back on making the film – in this 10th anniversary edition.